tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 18 19:10:28 2009
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SOMEBODY PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME FROM THE KLINGON LIST
On Mon, May 18, 2009 6:50 pm, David Trimboli wrote:
> Doq wrote:
>> I wanted to ask, "Why are you starting slowly?"
>>
>> Suddenly, I realized that I had one grammatical slot to put two words
>> in. I don't think we've been given any license to use two adverbials
>> with a single verb, since adverbials don't have conjunctions like
>> nouns and verbs do. Meanwhile, the question word for "why" is
>> grammatically treated as an adverbial, so I'm stuck.
>
> Is it? TKD 6.4 simply says the question words /nuqDaq/, /ghorgh/,
> /qatlh/, and /chay'/ occur "at the beginning of the sentence." It says
> nothing about them taking an "adverbial slot."
>
> In fact, we don't know anything about "adverbial slots." TKD 5.4 simply
> says that most adverbials occur "at the beginning of a sentence." We've
> never SEEN two adverbials in a single sentence (not counting /neH/,
> which works differently), but that doesn't automatically deny us the
> possibility.
>
> Basic Klingon sentence structure seems to be very amorphous. I picture
> it this way:
>
> <header> <object> <verb> <subject>
>
> where <header> is a nebulous blob containing all the bits that aren't
> the object, the verb, or the subject. Timestamps tend to come first,
> adverbials tend to come before nouns, question words tend to come before
> everything else. Of those tendencies, I think only the one about
> timestamps is explicit (TKD p. 179); the others probably come about due
> to our native language instincts. Strictly speaking, according to the
> book, timestamps tend to come first, adverbials tend to come last, and
> everything else appears between the two.
>
> This general structure has, of course, many exceptions. This is not an
> all-inclusive formula.
>
> qatlh QIt bItaghlI'?
>
> (Notice the lowercase /q/ in /qatlh/!)
>
> --
> David Trimboli
> http://www.trimboli.name/
>
>
>
>